Fusing these two interests meant I needed a vehicle to hang my creations on, and so dreamed up the concept of an imaginary sultanate in tropical Asia: Occussi-Ambeno.

This land (which actually exists: atlases published before 1975 show it as a tiny enclave on the isle of Timor) was extensively promoted by my public relations mailouts in the late 1960s and 70s.

Occussi-Ambeno began in 1968,and has issued stamps each year since. In 2008, we celebrated our 40th anniversary of independence from Portugal, the former colonial overlord, which makes O-A among the oldest fantasy lands around.

My first fantasy land wasWaikoa Island, in 1965. It celebrated it's half-century in 2015.

As I’ve grown older, and technology has improved, I have always taken advantage of whatever is around to enhance the life and productions of my fantasy land. For instance, I recently did a bookbinding course, and whilst there, produced passports for O-A.

When a teenager, I collected “the world”, but later, sold my collection and headed off for overseas experience. I had a few years in amazing Australia, living in Bondi, NSW, Cairns, Far North Queensland, and Perth, WA for a while, but didn’t meet any philatelists while there (not that I was particularly looking). After returning to NZ, I resumed philately in the 90s, and today, concentrate on the stamps of

Zanzibar, Katanga, South Kasai, Samoa, Lundy, Austria, Tuva, Bahamas, and Cayman Islands, and have managed to form great collections of all these lands. And recently, I've started on Hungary.

When I was at high school, I was introduced to letterpress, a most wonderful print medium with which I have remained fascinated (commonly called “typography” or “surface printing” by stamp catalogues.)

Upon leaving school, I bought my first press, an English-made Adana 8 x 5, which I still have. More recently, I was fortunate to be given a Heidelberg platen press: the Rolls-Royce of printing machines.

This press is fully automatic and produced most stamps of O-A and some other friendly lands for many years, until the modern digital era, when I got a laser-printer, and moved to full-colour stamps. In 1986, I was offered an old 1896 treadle perforating machine, so bought that, making me self-sufficient in stamp production.

Today, I continue to design and print the odd few O-A stamps, but also print stamps for many other fantasy lands, as well as Cinderella issues for any clubs and people I can assist. Like a stamp with you, your child, grandchild, or pet?

Just email me details and photos, and I will be happy to help. (Some mint recent commem sets of your country or minisheets are the preferred barter for such services.)

And of course, I am happy to correspond with anyone keen on the lands I collect. Catch me on bh (at) graphic-designer . com

I am happy to print & perforate stamps for anyone. The gauge is perf 12.

I prefer small runs, where you want only a few dozen or a few hundred. If you want many thousands, go to De la Rue in London.

It is best if you email me the photos you want used, and describe what values each should be and what colour frame around the edge. If there are several in the set, they can go in a minisheet together, such as this one (which I have recently done for a client in Christchurch):

Timaru 2017 centenary of the visit of the Hospital Ship "Marama" to Timaru. Set of two stamps, laser-printed, and perf 12.

In this example, the stamp dealer who ordered these emailed me some postcards showing the views of the ship, and I then composed them into the two stamps.Quantity done = 300. Sold at the Timaru Stamp Fair; a few extras possibly available from Shades Stamp Shop, P.O. Box 10-122, Christchurch 8145, New Zealand, at $6 per sheet, plus postage.

Some of you may have wondered about how to start
a new nation. Let me give an interesting case history: the saga of Bijzland.

A good friend lives in a rural utopia an hour's drive north of Auckland, and works as a
mail-order stamp dealer. A few years ago, he decided to start a fantasy
land: Japhyland, and I printed a stamp issue for him (which he
designed), printed him some nice FDCs, and made him a rubber datestamp. He seldom sells these, as being a dealer, he prefers to offer his clients only "respectable" stamps. (But if you want some of these, send an inquiry letter with some mint recent commemorative sets in trade, and you could get lucky!)A year later, to celebrate his birthday,
another mutual friend sent me a dozen early photos of Japhyland's founder,
going back to his youth days, and asked me to do a Japhyland set using
these. So the set was printed, perfed, and secretly brought along to the
celebration party, then a big package of minisheets was presented to Japhyland's
founder. He fished out his datestamp, stuck the stamps on covers and
postmarked them, and one was given to each guest.

The foregoing is an aside to the main story here. At the birthday, I was
chatting with my pal's young son, Brynn, then aged 11. He said that he
had contemplated starting a fantasy land himself, called Bijzland. Intrigued, I asked him to write it
down (as the spelling is tricky.) I asked him the location, and he told
me it is "an island off the coast of Russia."
I told him that was quite amazing, for Russian has a character in the alphabet
that pronounces "zh" which can only be used in words such as "Bijzland". I told him I'd see what I
could do in the way of making him some stamps.

So after returning home, I went through my old photos and located a couple of
Brynn from the time when his dad and I (with Brynn) attended the
Science-fiction convention in Auckland.
Brynn was especially enthusiastic to meet one of his heroes, the actor who
plays Bender the Robot,
from the TV comedy series "Futurama."
He queued up to meet Bender
and get his autograph, and I took a photo of Bender
as he was signing the autograph for Brynn.

Brynn, aged 11, on the first issue of Bijzland, 2011.

The other two stamps in the first issue showed a
rather blurry sideface portrait of Brynn on the 1 kopeck, and "Bender"
on the 12k.

Brynn again, on the 1k stamp of 2011.

"Bender" signs his name, with other celebrities in the background. Although the stamp was issued in 2011, it shows "2010" on the stamp, as that was the year the convention where bender signed was held.

Brynn gave away minisheets of his stamps to his
friends at school, and I also made him a rubber postmark:

Bijzland 2017 cover to West Papua. Note the bilingual datestamp.

Finding a Russian font was tricky, but I got
there in the end. I have printed him some other commemoratives over the
years since, but as he has grown older, his interests have moved more into
"gadgets", “online
games”, and "girls", as many teenage boys do.

I recommend enclose some stamps (attractive modern commemorative sets and
minisheets of your country are best), and request some Bijzland in
exchange. If you feel inclined to make suggestions for new issues while
writing, your favorite thematic topic may yet figure on a Bijzland stamp!

When printing stamps, I prefer to do them in small compact miniature sheets, so that they can easily fit on a standard album page.(How would anybody ever display a big sheet of 100 or 240 stamps? Those are totally unfriendly!)

Small sheets are also easy to post: an important consideration in an era where postage is charged by size of envelope.

Bijzland 2011 first issue: Brynn and Bender, and my first stamps with Russian inscriptions.

Under the command of Edward Smith, who went down with the ship, Titanic carried some of the wealthiest people in the world, as well as hundreds of emigrants from Great Britain and Ireland, Scandinavia
and elsewhere throughout Europe seeking a new life in North America.
The first-class accommodation was designed to be the pinnacle of comfort
and luxury, with an on-board gymnasium, swimming pool, libraries,
high-class restaurants and opulent cabins. A high-power radiotelegraph transmitter was available for sending passenger "marconigrams" and for the ship's operational use. Although Titanic had advanced safety features such as watertight compartments and remotely activated watertight doors, there were not enough lifeboats to accommodate all of those aboard, due to outdated maritime safety regulations. Titanic
only carried enough lifeboats for 1,178 people—slightly more than half
of the number on board, and one third of her total capacity. The Titanic had plenty of time to miss the iceberg but the helmsman
panicked and turned the wrong way. Incompetence and blunder were the
reasons for the disaster.

The error on the ship's maiden voyage
from Southampton to New York happened because there were two different
steering systems, with different commands attached to each. This was
because of the upheaval involving conversion from sail to steam-powered
ships. Some of the crew were used to the archaic Tiller Orders
(associated with sailing ships) while others to the more modern Rudder
Orders. Crucially, the two systems were the complete opposite of one
another: a command to turn "Hard a-starboard" meant turn right under the
Tiller system, but left under the Rudder.

When First Officer
William Murdoch spotted the iceberg two miles away, his "Hard
a-starboard" order was misinterpreted by the Quartermaster, Robert
Hitchins. He turned the ship right instead of left, and though he was
quickly told to correct it, it was too late, and the side of the
starboard bow was ripped out by the iceberg. The Chairman of the Board
of the ship owner White Star Line, J.B. Ismay, who was on the ship,
persuaded the captain to continue steaming ahead, and this added
enormously to water pressure flooding through the damaged hull. Had the
ship stopped, it would not have sunk for many more hours, allowing
everyone to be rescued by other ships. Because of Ismay's arrogant
stupidity, the sinking of Titanic caused the deaths of 1,514 people in
one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history.

Ismay
made sure he was among those who got on a lifeboat, leaving 1,514 to
perish in the icy sea. He was widely castigated as a coward thereafter,
and resigned his chairmanship of the shipping line in 1913. He died in
1937.

Bijzland 2014 Valentine's Day.

Valentine's Day, also called Saint Valentine's Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is an annual holiday celebrated on February 14. It originated as a WesternChristianliturgical feast day honoring one or more early saints named Valentinus, and is recognized as a significant cultural and commercial celebration in many regions around the world, although it is not a public holiday in any country.

Several martyrdom stories associated with the various Valentines that were connected to February 14 were added to later martyrologies, including a popular hagiographical account of Saint Valentine of Rome
which indicated he was imprisoned for performing weddings for soldiers
who were forbidden to marry and for ministering to Christians, who were persecuted under the Roman Empire. According to legend, during his imprisonment, Saint Valentine healed the daughter of his jailer, Asterius, and before his execution, he wrote her a letter signed "Your Valentine" as a farewell.

Japhyland 2011 40th birthday of Grant, the Japhyland head honcho, on a signed FDC. The silver text at the left of the cover is thermography, a heat-embossing process, which makes it look like cast metal.

I mentioned Japhyland stamps earlier, and here are some of the set showing Japhyland's founder. His son runs Bijzland, which has been slightly more stampiferous.

This set was a "surprise" birthday present for Grant: one of his friends sourced the photos, sent them to me, and I printed the stamps and FDCs in secret, and presented them to Grant at the party. He then affixed stamps to the covers, and fetched his postmark out and cancelled them, then each guest was presented with a signed autographed cover.

I think there were ten (or maybe 12) stamps in the set, so after tearing up the sheets, each FDC got 5 random stamps affixed, as the small envelopes could not fit the full set.

Any collectors seeking these could write to the Bijzland Agency address mentioned earlier, but address it to Japhyland Information Service. I'm sure he would be amenable to trading some.

My perforating machine, a huge and heavy foot-powered model made in
1895, and which does perf 12 gauge, still works well (due to almost
daily use!), and I am happy to perf stamps for anybody, as long as the
volume you give me is not too severe.

Some samples: (stamps done by laser-print on 80 gsm paper)

I
bought this machine back about 1987 (@ $150 NZ), when a newspaper
advert said old printing machinery up for sale. It was mostly metal
type fonts (and I bought a few of those too!!), but getting the vintage
perforator was the gem.

I have been addicted to it ever since.
Prior to then, I used a sewing machine, which does not clean out the
holes: it is "stabbing", rather than "punching".

If
you can kindly enclose a few recent mint sets of commemoratives or
minisheets of your country (that I can sell locally so I won't be out of
pocket to airmail the finished sheets back to you), that would be most
appreciated.

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot create polls in this forumYou cannot vote in polls in this forum